My fifth grade teacher taught me the phrase “she made Harry eat onions”, which one may use to help recall the west-to-east order of the Great Lakes:
She = Superior
Made = Michigan
Harry = Huron
Eat = Erie
Onions = Ontario
Now I can’t recall any instance in my life where this has ever proved remotely useful. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen any of the Great Lakes. But, I’ll always be prepared for the day when it happens.
[Walter Middy-esque Segue] Wolf Blitzer: The masked gunman’s motives are unclear, but he has threatened to execute the hostages in less than five minutes unless someone can tell him the correct order of the Great Lakes, from west to east. For all their sakes, we can only hope that there’s a person nearby who had a good fifth grade teacher… Kizarvexius: Stand aside, ladies and gentleman. I can help. I was taught by Mrs. Fitzsimmons. Crowd: Ooooooohhh.
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Besides, being a trivia nut, I can’t help collecting such little tidbits.
Kizarvexilla brought one home a couple of weeks ago that was new to me, one that in light of certain recent events, may be in need of revision. But I still thought it was cool. “My very energetic mother just served us nine pizzas” is a mnemonic for the order of the planets.
My = Mercury
Very = Venus
Energetic = Earth
Mother = Mars
Just = Jupiter
Served = Saturn
Us = Uranus
Nine = Neptune
Pizzas = Pluto
I usually make up my own that make little to no sense, but I end up remembering them somehow anyway.
Example, for the prefixes in naming compounds in organic chemistry, I invented “Mary eats peppers but peppers hate her.” (meth-, eth-, prop-, but-, pent-, hex-, hept-)
Good luck remembering that one.
In a slightly similar vein, a few years ago I was cramming for a history exam where I had to memorize a very long list of people and the thing they were most famous for (or what my Professor decided they were most famous for, at least).
I was at a diner with friends while doing this, and my (slightly eccentric) friend told me to remember that Archimedes discovered the formula for pi because Archimedes was the name of the owl in The Sword in the Stone, pies sit on windowsills, and if you look out the window you might see an owl.
Completely off the wall, but obviously I’ve managed to remember it.
I learned “HOMES:” Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior
I love mnemonic devices; it’s like a way to cheat memory. A few that I remember:
[ul]
[li]“On old Olympus’s tower top, a Finn and German viewed a hop:” The twelve cranial nerves.[/li][li]“How I need a drink, alcholic of course:” The first few numbers of pi (count the number of letters in each word). This is the beginning of a great long poem, which I can’t remember of course.[/li][li]“Leaping zebras pounce down drains:” The stages of prophase in meiosis: Leptotene, zygotene, pachytene, diplotene, diakinesis[/li][li]“Egad my tiger has cancer:” I can remember this mnemonic device, but can’t remember what the heck it means.[/li][/ul]
Er, my favorite got lost for some reason: “Never lower Tillie’s pants, mother might come home.” These are the eight carpal bones (the wrist), although two of the names are a bit archaic: Navicular (scaphoid), lunate, triquetrum, pisifom, multangular majus (trapezium), multangular minus (trapezoid), capitate, hamate
Is it just me, or does it seem like a lot of these mnemonic devices aren’t all that much easier to memorize than what they’re…um, mnemonicizing?
To answer the OP, I remember using Every Good Boy Does Fine for the notes on the lines in music notation(in treble clef; the spaces are F-A-C-E). I also remember the thingy where you use your knuckles and the gaps between to represent the months that have 31 days vs. the ones that don’t, but that’s not exactly a mnemonic, I reckon.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, grey, white
Resistor value color code. Evidently invented before there were as many female electrical engineers as there are today.
If there is one for Kingdom, phyllum, class, order, family, genus, species, please don’t post it. It would prolly mess me up and I’d never be able to remember the actual words ever again.
For planets, I prefer the French " Mon Vieux, Tu M’as Jeter Sur Une Nouvelle Planète", which is a bit more relevant. There’s also “Richard Of York Gains Battles In Vain” for rainbow colours.
I took a gander at the site I linked to earlier: Not really all that impressive. Among other things, it has multiple mnemonic (man, that’s hard to type) devices for the four cardinal directions. You need a mnemonic device to remember North, East, South and West?!
